Finding fact-based information about important public policy issues has never been more difficult than it is today. The liberal power-grab of many of America’s once-revered news outlets has turned them on their heads.
Resources such as the New York Times are now closely associated with Democrat-led anti-Semitism, and CNN — once “the most trusted name in news,” according to its slogan — is the most recognized fake news outlet. As left-wing zealotry expands, everyday Americans are discovering that even local and regional media sources are being usurped by liberal extremists. The NRA recently uncovered left-wing propaganda being used to promote gun confiscation.
“Researchers from the University of California, Davis, have found that, in the three years since California implemented the nation’s first law allowing guns to be taken from individuals who pose an extreme risk, the so-called red flag orders have prevented at least 21 mass shootings.”
That quote was not from one of the commonly identified fake news outlets. Instead, it was a summary published by the Sacramento Bee in California about a research study into the impact of so-called Red Flag laws. Despite the pesky facts that the study was written by a well-known anti-Second Amendment academic with extreme views, the Sacramento Bee pushed his findings as if they were the gospel.
The liberal extremists at U.C. Davis School of Medicine called their paper, “Extreme Risk Protection Orders Intended to Prevent Mass Shootings: A Case Series,” and it concluded that gun confiscation saved hundreds of lives. The lead academic, Dr. Garen Wintemute, has been publishing anti-gun works throughout his career and has yet to reach the conclusion that being armed and self-reliant can save a life.
But what is even more stunning is that the Sacramento Bee took his conclusions to a greater extreme than the left-wing researcher himself. Wintemute wrote that his “research,” if you can call it that, could not decisively conclude the Red Flag gun confiscation laws prevented mass shootings.
“It is impossible to know whether violence would have occurred had ERPOs not been issued, and the authors make no claim of a causal relationship,” Wintemute reportedly admitted.
What the Sacramento Bee appears to be doing is the same type of fake news propaganda one would expect from the likes of CNN. They grabbed on to something that seems “scientific” and ran with it, knowing few of its declining readership would take the time to read the research paper. That’s the space where trust and journalistic integrity is violated. That’s why CNN no longer has a program among the top 20 cable news shows.
The facts, for anyone who has the time to read the U.C. Davis paper, is that “the 21 incidents included two suspected terrorist plots, and nearly all of the cases involved specific threats, which are already crimes in California and can be charged as either a misdemeanor or a felony. A felony conviction or even indictment would itself result in a federal prohibition on the acquisition or possession of firearms,” according to an NRA-led expose.
The Sacramento Bee also left out relevant data such as some of the case studies included people who spoke out of anger in the heat of the moment, and at least one of the subjects was making a bad joke. Only 11 of the 21 incidents reportedly led to an arrest and five had no details about an outcome. But if sidestepping a few facts to create a phony narrative were not enough, the Sacramento Bee took this charade one step further. The case study was not scheduled to be published until spring because it had not been completed.
Wintemute, a fierce gun-hating liberal, tanked the research that included 414 case studies all told. He and his left-wing team reached out to the fake news with only 21 in hand. Rather than follow through like respectable impartial researchers, they jumped on the attacks in Gilroy, Dayton, and El Paso like opportunists. The fake news media was willing to oblige their effort to push incomplete research as credible and lean on off-the-cuff remarks such as “this urgent, individualized intervention can play a role in efforts to prevent mass shootings.”
No one doubts there are unhinged people out there that would do others harm. But when members of the media soil their credibility to push fake news, gun confiscation propaganda, they truly are the enemy of the people.
